Currently, many company web sites (including, internet sites and intranet sites) contain some feature or method to display driving directions to the physical locations where the company is located. This allows a person who wants to drive to that location to easily find the directions by accessing the web site, without needing to consult external sources. The directions may be as simple as a written description of the roads and turns to take or may be as robust as a graphical map of several driving routes that could be taken to the location, along with generic estimated driving times. However, none of these options for driving directions give any information about the level of traffic currently on the roads that lead to the location. Estimated driving times are currently calculated simply based on maximum speed limits for the roads. What is needed is a way to display, on a web site, real-time information about the level of traffic on the roads that lead to a physical location. In this manner, a person who wants to drive to a location can simply bring up the web site for that location in a web browser and easily obtain not only driving directions, but whether they will encounter a significant level of traffic along the way.
Furthermore, a goal of many commercially-oriented web sites is to drive traffic (i.e., eyeballs) to the web site and to maintain the users on the web sites for as long as possible so as to increase advertising opportunities and promote branding. Web sites that provide useful and constantly changing information receive a tremendous number of hits each day. Weather, news and sports sites are examples of such high traffic sites. Since traffic information is also useful and constantly changing, a web site that includes current traffic information or a link to such traffic information is likely to experience an increase in the frequency of hits and the duration of the viewing period. Thus, it is desirable to provide a scheme to allow traffic information to be obtained on any web site.